And Charlotte Trigg, 29, admits to being passionate about flying mammals which, she says, get a bad rap – because of a certain Count Dracula.

The biodiversity project manager volunteered for Birmingham and Black Country Bat Group during lockdown, bringing her expertise when she joined Severn Trent two years ago.

And part of its current role is to help conserve mammals, whose numbers have declined since the 1950s due to urbanization, habitat loss and a huge decline in their main food source : invertebrates.

“I’m known as the Bat Lady of Severn Trent!” laughed Charlotte, who lives near Birmingham with her husband of five years, Matthew.

“Almost all of our reservoir sites are visited by bats and we want to keep this going as it is a great indicator that other wildlife, insects and invertebrates are also doing well there.

“We help bat conservation groups with their projects at our sites, including surveys to understand which species visit them. We facilitate tracking and marking and have also installed bat boxes on some sites.

“We also ensure, where we can, that there are corridors of trees and hedges for bats to fly onto our land, and we liaise with our teams to ensure that bats construction work does not disturb habitats.”

So why are the public so nervous about the misunderstood creatures of the night?

“Historically, many people have been afraid of bats, probably because of Bram Stoker’s Dracula! But in reality, no species in the UK is dangerous. Most are smaller than the palm of the hand and do not bite at all. To me they are just very cute.

Rarer species of bats have been recorded at the Severn Trent site in recent times, including a small horseshoe bat at Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire. This species had not been seen in the county for approximately 100 years.

And Charlotte recently took part in the national Nathusius Pipistrelle project for an evening of trapping in a West Midlands reservoir to help monitor the population.

“This allowed us to collect information such as weight, length, age, as well as a DNA sample and add a ring to track the movements of the bats if they were trapped again .”

Charlotte, a former RSPB West Midlands Project Manager, works in Severn Trent’s award-winning biodiversity and ecology department. She said: “This is a very passionate and hardworking team who seek to protect and enhance the wildlife and biodiversity at Severn Trent sites across the region. They do an incredible job to ensure we have a treasure trove of wildlife on our sites.